Bellamy laughed openly at that, though he wasn't sure if she was making a joke or serious. Hours on recitation? Surely no one could really think there was any benefit to that? Whether she was serious about the activity or not, though, she at least seemed to be of the same opinion he did that the practice would be useless.
"We never spent much time talking about family honor," he admitted, still laughing. "My uncle was involved in the slave trade eighty years after they made it illegal, so — not much honor left to salvage after that came out, I think." Maybe he shouldn't be discussing that quite so openly, but it had been a fact of his life so long that the shock value of the statement had worn off for Bellamy. It wasn't as though he'd been personally traumatized by the news; he had only met Sebastian Echelon once or twice prior to his sordid affairs coming to light, and had no particularly salient memories of him. Certainly no fond ones. Still, the point remained: for someone whose close relative had made his fortune by selling people against their will, notion of legacy and honor seemed, at best, unspeakably pretentious.
"We never spent much time talking about family honor," he admitted, still laughing. "My uncle was involved in the slave trade eighty years after they made it illegal, so — not much honor left to salvage after that came out, I think." Maybe he shouldn't be discussing that quite so openly, but it had been a fact of his life so long that the shock value of the statement had worn off for Bellamy. It wasn't as though he'd been personally traumatized by the news; he had only met Sebastian Echelon once or twice prior to his sordid affairs coming to light, and had no particularly salient memories of him. Certainly no fond ones. Still, the point remained: for someone whose close relative had made his fortune by selling people against their will, notion of legacy and honor seemed, at best, unspeakably pretentious.
